MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 57 
tober, and we disbanded and went into winter quarters. The tree- 
planting campaign on the Main Line for the season of 1873 was a 
brilliant success, and marks an era in forest tree culture in Minne- 
sota. 
The spring of 1874 opened inauspiciously for tree-planting inter- 
ests on this line. Litigious Dutch bondholders, scheming financial 
agents, hostile legislation, suits for a receiver, suits to foreclose, 
suits to vacate the charter, with the senseless clamor of noisy dema- 
gogues, gave the management full scope for their abilities, without 
bothering their heads about tree-planting. 
It was not until April 1st, 1874, that anything was decided upon 
with reference to tree planting, and even then I had to hire my crew 
with the understanding that the work might be suspended any time. 
We managed however, to get some 115,000 white willow, lombar- 
dy and cottonwood cuttings. We had on hand ash and box elder 
seed enough for two million trees. These were all planted in good 
season. In the meantime, the company had succeeded in obtaining 
20,000 two-year old European larch trees, from the nursery of 
Douglass & Sons, Waukegan, and with 110,000 two and three year 
old trees from Peterson’s Chicago Nurseries, and also with 50,000 
willow cuttings from our old friend Somerville, for the parks which 
had been broken in 1872, fenced in 1873, at Willmar, Randall, Han- 
cock, Morris, Hermann, Gorton and Campbell, and partially planted 
in spring of 1874, with this stock so opportunely furnished. When 
the soft maple and elm seed commenced falling, the company fur- 
nished money to buy and plant them in their proper season, and 
also in the fall, the company managed to furnish the means to buy 
and plant seeds for several millions of box elder, ash, white, black, 
red, burr and jack oak, butternuts and sugar maple, which were all 
planted just before the ground froze up, excepting a few bushels of 
box elder seed now on hand. The ash seed planted in the fall of 
1873 came up in the spring; scarcely a seed failed and the young 
ash stand from 12 to 20 inches high. The ash and box elder sowed 
in spring of 1874, have done equally well, and we have every reason 
to believe the seed planted in the fall of 1874, will realize our rea- 
sonable expectations. Although the season of 1874 was not as fa- 
vorable as the preceding season, we have no cause to complain. 
The seeds and cuttings have come to time in good shape, and are 
now thrifty young trees. Our 500,000 white willow cuttings of the 
planting of 1873 now stand from six to fourteen feet high, already 
in many places forming very respectable wind-breaks. Another 
winter they will afford sufficient protection to repay their cost. Our 
last work before breaking up camp, was to thin out from this first 
planting enough for 500,000 cuttings for another springs’ planting, 
or for the accommodation of settlers who may wish to plant. We 
can at any time next spring thin out enough for another 500,000 lot 
if necessary. 
The results of the last two seasons operation in tree-planting on 
the Main Line is the production of not far from four million young 
orest trees where none stood before; the practical demonstration of 
the adaptation of the soil of the treeless region to forest tree culture, 
and consequently the practicability of forest tree culture on a scale 
